1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a surveillance system and particularly to such a system suitable for a point-of-sale transaction station.
2. General Description of the Prior Art
High-volume retail stores have suffered from point-of-sale shrinkage, ranging as high as several percent of the retail value of the goods handled. The invention of the cash register resulted in the virtual elimination of direct theft of cash by employees. The introduction of direct control over cash meant that point-of-sale shrinkage could only occur by falsifying the true value of a transaction. One common method employed in the alteration of a transaction is for the cashier to enter into a prior agreement with a customer to ring up less than the true values of the items in the customer's order (under-ringing) or not to ring some items at all (no-rings).
Obviously, to detect these forms of theft more information must be kept on each transaction than is preserved on a cash register tape.
The installation of a closed circuit television system has an initial chilling effect on under-ringing and no-rings. But when the cashiers realize that there is no direct association between what is being rung on the cash register and what is being passed across the counter, the effectiveness of the system decays and losses tend to go back up to near their previous values. The use of two cameras, one aimed at the counter where goods are being placed and the other aimed at the cash register display, with the signals from the two cameras mixed together with a special effects generator, allows a specific set of transactions on a cash register to be associated with a specific set of goods going across the counter. In one system the two cameras are appropriately aimed and deployed on a rail U.S. Pat. No. 3,935,380). It has been found that such a two-camera system does not work well for electronic registers where displays are light emitting diodes or liquid crystal displays, and it tends to store large quantities of detailed video information which cannot be readily abstracted for monitoring by an operator. With the present state of the art (scene analysis) it would be technically and economically infeasible to edit and process (by computer) the video data for any particular pattern of activity (such as for the manager to call for all records on a certain class of transactions or total sales).
Accordingly, it is an object of this invention to provide a new and improved surveillance system.
Another object is to provide a new and improved surveillance system for a point-of-sale transaction station.
Another object is to provide a new and improved surveillance system for use in commercial establishments with multiple point-of-sale transaction stations.
Another object is to provide a new and improved surveillance system capable of storing video information which is edited in accordance with prescribed criteria.
Another object is to provide a new and improved surveillance system for point-of-sale stations that supplies the video records on specified classes of transactions, which can be done with the present inventions.